When the Sox went up 3-2 today on Everett's home run I got to thinking: the Sox have been leading at some point in every game this season. Obviously they led at the end of every win, they lead by 3 going into the ninth of the first Cleveland loss, the drew first blood in the loss to the Twins, they went up 5-4 in the fourth of the second loss to the Indians, and they led 3-2 today. Without doing the research, I bet few to no other teams in baseball can say this.

My question is this: How does this affect the assumption that teams have 60 given wins, 60 given losses, and 42 up in the air? So far I would only put the loss to the Twins in the "given losses" category. Obviously there will be more than 1 in 12, but what if we only have 40 given losses, 60 given wins, and 62 games up in the air in which we have a .600 winning percentage? That puts us at 96-97 wins. The way this team has played so far this season, I think this is a relatively accurate and possible scenario? Any thoughts?

Whitesox029

04-17-2005, 10:34 PM

When the Sox went up 3-2 today on Everett's home run I got to thinking: the Sox have been leading at some point in every game this season. Obviously they led at the end of every win, they lead by 3 going into the ninth of the first Cleveland loss, the drew first blood in the loss to the Twins, they went up 5-4 in the fourth of the second loss to the Indians, and they led 3-2 today. Without doing the research, I bet few to no other teams in baseball can say this.

My question is this: How does this affect the assumption that teams have 60 given wins, 60 given losses, and 42 up in the air? So far I would only put the loss to the Twins in the "given losses" category. Obviously there will be more than 1 in 12, but what if we only have 40 given losses, 60 given wins, and 62 games up in the air in which we have a .600 winning percentage? That puts us at 96-97 wins. The way this team has played so far this season, I think this is a relatively accurate and possible scenario? Any thoughts?
Today was a "given loss" as you put it. You can't just save all the Santana games for that category because there have to be 60 of them. Meche pitched very well. That makes it a "given loss." Not a whole lot could have been done to prevent it. We're using more than one IF here. In the Takatsu game, it's IF he would have gotten Belliard out, we would have won. That's it. One IF. Today, it was IF Harris had been safe (or tagged up on the previous play) and IF Pablo had gotten a hit sufficient to score Harris and IF we would have gotten at least one more in the 9th or an extra inning without the bullpen imploding, then we would have won. See the difference? Multiple IFs.